As many know, the wondrous Sarah B. has turned her concept Cringe into a book deal, as well as a television series that just finished filming its pilot.

Cringe is where people stand in front of an audience and read excerpts from the diaries or journals that they kept as teenagers.

I am sad that I can never participate because I didn’t keep a diary as a teenager.  But it did occur to me that I wrote a few diary entries in junior high, so this past Thanksgiving I ransacked my old bookcase at my parents’ house to find it.  I did, in fact, find the journal.

Of course, the first thing to notice is that the journal is actually an official Judy Blume diary given to me by my mother one Christmas:

Which leads to the inevitable question: why did my mother think I was gay?

I knew that the diary contained mostly blank pages.  The only thing I remember writing was an account of me challenging another kid to a fight after school.  We fought and eventually the police got involved.  I wanted to re-read that entry, but I completely forgot that I filled out the introductory page as well.

Here’s how I filled out the Introductory page at age 12:

I LIKE: Comics, girls, The Greatest American Hero, rock n roll parties, fun, space stuff, adventures, books, and stuff that makes me look glamorous.

Oh. So that’s why my mother thought I was gay.

Note to younger self: Look, Liberace, I’d worry less about the glamor bit and concentrate more on taking the steep turns less quickly on your way back from dinner with your prom date.  Such attention to detail will ensure that your date doesn’t throw up, which will help get you laid a lot faster than whatever extreme makeover thing you’re going on about.

As for “rock n roll parties"--settle down, Greased Lightning, you’re not exactly the leader of the T-Birds.

I HATE: School, fights, poison oak, acne, crime, snobs, Ronald Reagan, peas, hikes, manners, and people with no sense of humor!

Actually, I still hate most of these things.  Hikes can be nice.

THIS YEAR IN SCHOOL: Will be told probably later in this package called Judy Blume’s (yes Judy Blume!) diary.  Do you have any comic books?

There’s going to be a television show with this kind of material?  I don’t know if I can stand another ten seconds of this, much less a half hour.

Some material in this diary may not be suitable for children or adults.

Okay, sorry, I was going to transcribe the entry about the fight, but I’ve reached my limit--much the way one can only take about twenty minutes of any movie starring Amanda Byrnes.  I’m going to go de-tox.  I haven’t been this glad not to be twelve since the day I turned thirteen.